


Left to Lose

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This way it is not a turning away. A turning away implies abandonment. A turning away implies a turning toward." Corvo finds himself standing over another grave, though this time he is not quite alone. Postgame. (Drabble)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the bad version of the High Chaos ending.

It is a beautiful day.

He knows, because he has watched it all. Unmoving. He has watched the shadows shrink and lengthen, watched the sun circle the white stone as if it is the point on which the world turns. Because it is. And now the shadows are long, and the sun is sinking to kiss the horizon and color it like a wound, and he aches down to his bones from long standing – but he does not and cannot move.

To turn, to leave, would be to turn his back. To walk away whole. To _fail_. And he cannot abandon her.

Not another. Not _again_.

There is a space inside his ribs, it seems. A physical ache. It is as hollow as a hole in the ground. Or the fall into the empty air, through it, the long, long fall.

The shadows are so long.

One of them catches his eye and he looks up.

The man is perched delicately on the top of her headstone, his back against the pillar of ivy. His knees are drawn up. His feet rest over the _E_ , the _D,_ the dates that are too short. His face is blank and his eyes are fixed on Corvo, and the shadows drape around him like a shroud.

And he must see something in Corvo’s face – the curl of a lip, the lines as hard as a skull – because he stands, hurriedly. Steps away. Corvo watches as he turns a few paces back to consider the little grave. Listens as he clears his throat. His voice is careful. “She would have been  -”

_“Don’t.”_

The sound of his voice startles them both. Raw and ragged as the edge of shattered bone after a long, long fall.

The Outsider nods, once. Studies Corvo with eyes that are empty and dark and then reaches into the shadows that surround him and draws something forth – something small, something soft. It takes him a minute to recognize it.

He remembers Emily speak of offering a ridiculous reward for the doll that was lost the day she was taken from Dunwall Tower – and he would laugh, now, if there was something left but _hollow_. He still cannot move. He does nothing as the Outsider approaches the grave and lays it down against the stone.

The rest of her dolls are in there, Corvo knows. All of her dolls. And her drawings. The drawing of the tower. Of Jessamine. Of him. All of it. He has made sure.

The Outsider takes a half-step back and straightens.

And he bows.

He bows, once, careful, face empty and shadows curled around him like a cloak; and he melts away like mist in rain.

Corvo stands still for a moment more, or two, and then he does as well. He blinks down to the walkway below, appearing like a ghost. This way it is not a turning away. A turning away implies abandonment. A turning away implies a turning _toward_. He shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and he walks toward the docks, toward the sea, toward the wide expanse of sea as empty as the sky.

And his mind turns back like the turning of the sun to the white grave on the white hill. To the Outsider standing before her. The shadows that clung to him were long, so long – and when he bowed to the not-Empress, to the little girl, the shadows were not quite long enough to touch.

Corvo thinks of this as he walks toward another ship that will bear him far to sea.

It is the last time any of the three will see each other.


End file.
